Five Times Brittany almost Dies in an Accident
by Arishako
Summary: Five times Brittany almost dies in an accident and one time she wishes she had . Brittana.


**Title**: Five Times Brittany almost Dies in an Accident (and One Time she Wishes she had)

**Warnings**: Descriptions of a car accident + injuries, language

**Word Count**: 3143

**Spoilers**: None.

**AN: **Inspired by a prompt from LJ.

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**i.**

Brittany dug through the contents of her dad's desk drawer, searching. She stood on the tips of her toes (_like a ballet dancer_, she thought) with one hand holding the edge of the drawer for support and the other pushing around the various lame business-y stuff until she found what she was looking for—the extra pair of scissors.

"I got 'em, Santi!" She shouted, completely blowing any attempts at secrecy up to that point.

"'Kay," the other girl called from Brittany's room, "bring them back in here." The two girls had decided to make origami animals for their parents, but, as it turns out, origami was actually a lot harder than it looked. After about fifteen minutes of futilely folding and unfolding paper (or, in Santana's case, crumpling up paper into balls and tossing them at the walls) Brittany had suggested that they just cut out animals instead.

It seemed like a good idea.

Brittany fell back on her heels and closed the drawer loudly before dashing out of the office. She ran through the hallway and stomped up the stairs, gripping the scissors tightly in her small fist. She even almost made it to her room, too, but then her mom came out of the master bedroom and saw her.

"Brittany, don't run with scissors!" she yelled to her daughter for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"Huh?" Brittany said and turned her head. No longer focused, she wobbled slightly, and her feet caught against themselves (she was surprisingly uncoordinated for a soon-to-be dancer, but whenever asked about this she would always just say that it took different energy to walk than it did to dance). She threw her arms out in front of her to catch herself, but they gave in and she fell to the carpeted floor of the hall with a thump.

"Brittany, are you okay?" Brittany's head was spinning a little, and her mom kind of sounded far away.

"Brit, did you fall?" Santana came running out of her room and crouched on the floor next to her.

"Ngh, yeah. I'm fine," Brittany said, opening her eyes.

The first thing she saw was the silver blades of the scissors just inches from her face, shining in the light, pointing at her widened eyes like an arrowhead.

Santana pulled on her friend's arm until she was sitting up and they were at the same level (well, not really; even at this age Brittany was a rather tall child). "I found something else to do," she said. "Let's go."

The two got up to their feet and ran towards Brittany's room, the scissors forgotten on the hallway floor. "Don't trip this time!" Santana shouted to her friend behind her with a goofy smile on her face.

They laughed.

**ii.**

No matter how much Brittany kind of loved Santana, she kind of hated Santana's house more. Even though she'd been going to her friend's house since she was, like, _born_ (or at least since she was, like, five), she could never remember where anything was. She'd always barge into the wrong room and either spend five minutes looking around confused or—even worse—have someone from Santana's family give her that '_Aww-you're-stupid_' look and guide her to the right room themselves.

It was worse at nights. Whenever she'd have a sleepover with Santana, Brittany would make sure that she never left the bedroom alone, for fear of getting lost and never seeing anyone again ever.

Santana usually rolled her eyes when Brittany said that, but she never gave her the Stupid look, so Brittany didn't mind.

"C'mon, San, I wanna get some apple juice," Brittany pouted, tugging at her friend's wrist. True to form, Santana sighed loudly and put down her GameCube controller.

They tiptoed across the upstairs hall (not actually all that quietly, since Brittany insisted on humming the Scooby Doo theme song as they went), palms stretched out in front of them in the darkness to protect them from walls or monsters or both.

"Wait," Brittany whispered, "where are the stairs?"

"They're right over—" Santana never finished her sentence. With her weakened vision, she saw the large black blob that she had earlier identified as Brittany sway for a moment and then fall to the side. Without a thought, she stepped forward and, with more strength than she thought she could muster, wrapped her arm around Brittany's chest and grabbed tightly to the handrail with her free hand.

"Geez, Britt," she growled. After a moment of just _dangling_ at an awkward angle, watching the blackness swirl below her like it went on forever, Brittany grabbed the handrail and pulled herself back up to the top of the staircase.

"There they are," she said softly. "Thanks, San."

"Yeah, sure." Santana rubbed her shoulder, which was still aching from holding up her friend. "Ow."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sure," she repeated and shrugged (though Brittany could see, even in the dark, that Santana was only shrugging one shoulder). "It's just a sprain. Let's go, and be _careful_ this time!"

The two girls continued down the stairs and into the kitchen in silence. "Hey, San," Brittany said while her friend reached for a glass from the cabinet. "For a moment, you were sideways."

They laughed.

**iii.**

The sounds of children's laughter filled the park with life. Santana hated it (well, not really). Brittany liked climbing the trees near the pond in the center. Therefore, they went to the park at least twice a month.

"Did you know there are people in this lake?" Brittany said to Santana, pointing at the pond (hardly a lake) from the bench the two were cuddling in. Santana shook her head, and Brittany jumped up from her seat (half on the bench and half on her friend's lap) to show her.

She bent over the edge of the pond and waved at her reflection, before reaching forward with one hand and touching it to the water. A small ripple spread from where the two fingers—one real, one mirrored—met. "See." Her voice was quiet, awed. "People."

Santana just smiled (and, yeah, _maybe_ checked out Brittany's ass a little, but come _on_, who wouldn't?) and closed her eyes, trying to drive away the oncoming headache of spending too much time in the same vicinity as that screaming kid that had been crying behind her for, like, the past half-hour.

That is, until she heard the splash.

Had Santana taken a moment to think about it, she would have admitted that it didn't _really_ surprise her that Brittany had fallen into the pond. She loved Brittany, but the blonde was, well. (Her subconscious would offer up the word "stupid," and Santana would shoot it down determinedly.) But she didn't think about it. She just sprang up from the bench and jumped into the water.

As it turned out, the pond was only, like, four feet deep, so Santana twisted an ankle with her landing. But Brittany still hadn't resurfaced (what the _hell_?), so the other girl ignored the throbbing from her foot and dropped her head below the surface of the water.

Santana groped around the bottom of the pond for a few seconds—her eyes shut tightly 'cause there were probably, like, _fish_ in the water or something—before her hand bumped against the back of Brittany's shirt. She fisted the material and just _pulled_ until two loud splashes signaled their resurfacing.

The two girls coughed and sputtered for a moment before Brittany, who had seemingly forgotten at this point that she had just nearly drowned, held up her left hand and said, "Look what I found!" There was a dull ring resting simply on her third finger (and Santana had _no_ idea how Brittany could have possibly found that in the water, since all the fake jewels were crusted with mud and no longer sparkling).

"Here," Brittany said and pulled the ring off her finger to hand it to her friend. "You wear it."

Santana took the dirty ring in her hand (she was already covered in pond grime anyway, so whatever) and slipped it on to her own ring finger. Just like every freaking storybook cliché come to life, it fit.

"Thanks for helping me," Brittany said. Santana smiled for a second, but the moment was getting way too saccharine, so she then swung her hand down and splashed the other girl.

Of course, that resulted in a loud splashing war that lasted until the park security not-politely asked them to get out of the water.

As they got out, Santana flipped her dripping hair back and, with perfect aim, splashed the guard in the face. He snorted and left.

They laughed.

**iv.**

They laughed.

They were driving down Buckeye, Brittany at the wheel and Santana reclining in the passenger's seat, listening to cheesy hip-hop music, telling jokes, and they _laughed_.

"Wait, wait," Santana struggled to say between snickers, "let me try, now." She cleared her face of emotions (which, in itself, caused the two girls to crack up again) and cleared her throat. In her best Sue Sylvester voice, she spoke, "You think that's hard? I surgically removed my own tear ducts when I was nineteen. That's hard!"

The two broke out into uncontrollable laughter once more. Brittany paused to wipe the tears from her eyes and Santana leaned back once again, humming contentedly

(_Fuck!_)

until she saw the headlights of the red Chevrolet Silverado heading right toward them and heard the blaring car horns of the people whose lane Brittany had just swerved through.

Santana yelled out, "Shit!" and immediately reached across the centerpiece and pulled the steering wheel hard right. Brittany, who had startled at the loud noise and was now completely panicking, turned the wheel to the left.

Their car didn't turn, and the sounds of metal ripping through metal filled the air. Then, silence.

Brittany was the first to open her eyes. (Well, the second, actually. The driver of the pickup she hit had already stumbled out of the car and was talking urgently on his phone.) All she could see was the white of the deployed airbag in front of her. She was kind of dizzy—and her right shin was throbbing; each pulse felt like it was sending another rush of warm fluid to drip down her ankle—but she was _alive_.

And then she looked to her right.

Santana's arm was trapped between the steering wheel airbag and Brittany's chest. It had been pushed back from when she had tried to grab the wheel, and now it was bent at a funny angle. Her hand was hanging loose in the now-cleared-up space between Brittany and the safety device; her fingers dangled limply, already swollen.

Brittany looked up at her friend to see Santana's face, frozen in a position of shock eyes widened with horror, looking not at Brittany at all but rather at her own shoulder. Just like her arm, it was bent up in a strange shape, and the back of her shoulder was causing her skin to stick out in a bump as if she were hiding something under there. Santana's eyes met Brittany's.

She screamed.

**v.**

Brittany was sent home from the hospital the next day. She just had some minor cuts and scratches, with the exception of the large but rather shallow laceration on her right shin that had taken over fifteen stitches to close. She was given a bottle of painkillers with a name she couldn't pronounce and a pat on the head (and a hell of a lot of financial trouble regarding her auto-insurance, but she didn't know about that since her mom took care of money stuff) and was told to scram.

She sat in her bed but couldn't sleep, even though the doctors told her to and doctors are smart. She was too worried about Santana, who had been rushed to the ER for a broken scapula (and for nearly fifteen minutes Brittany had cried because she thought the doctors said 'spatula' and she would have bought her friend _another one_ if they were that important), among many other broken bones in her arm that wouldn't need quite as urgent attention.

She couldn't sleep because she had the image of her best friend in her mind. Her best friend, who had actually started to _cry_ in her seat (they'd been too scared to move until the ambulance showed up) and whimper pathetically to Brittany, "Oh God it hurts so bad Britt I can't breathe please help me please please please"; who had, when the flashing red and white lights finally arrived behind them, bit her tongue so hard it bled to stop the sobs from escaping her mouth in front of others; who had tried to cooperate with the EMT helping her out of the car, but when her arm moved from Brittany's chest, it didn't just bend, it _collapsed_ like a cooked noodle.

She couldn't sleep because all these thoughts just kept spinning around in her head, and it made Brittany feel like _she_ was spinning, too. Her head hurt, so she reached for the bottle of painkillers on her dresser that she was supposed to take once every four hours.

It had been four hours since her last pill. She poured half the bottle into her hand (she'd save the other half for four hours from now) and reached for her teddy bear mug. She swallowed all the pills, choking once around the middle but getting over it quickly.

She didn't wake up from her nap for a long time, but when she did she found herself back at the hospital. For a moment, she thought she was dreaming; then she thought she had sleepwalked, but she knew she was awake when she heard a cry of relief and saw her mom standing over her.

Her dad appeared on the other side of the bed, and the two adults talked at her for several moments about how worried they were, how happy they are that she's okay, and gosh _darnit_, Brittany, didn't you learn your lesson the _last_ time you took too many painkillers?

"Are you okay?" Brittany's little sister said quietly from the corner of the room, and the three suddenly went silent, waiting for the answer.

Brittany nodded her head 'yes,' because her throat felt like it was on fire. She rubbed at her neck.

Her mom caught the action and said, "Oh, yes. The doctor said you might have a sore throat. Here." She handed her daughter a glass of water.

Brittany sipped, feeling the cool liquid partially soothe the burning. "Can I see Santana, now?" she whispered.

As it turned out, no—no she couldn't. She had to sit through nearly an hour of a doctor talking about the side effects of getting her stomach pumped and foods that wouldn't cause her to throw up and _another_ doctor asking her stupid questions about 'why she did it' and stuff.

Finally, a nurse helped her into a wheelchair and took her to her best friend's room.

Santana was sleeping. (She was actually snoring a bit and drooling down her chin, but Brittany kind of didn't care about that much, because it just felt really good to know that she was alive right now.) She had this ginormous cast on her arm and hand and bandages wrapped around her chest.

Santana probably would have to wear that huge cast for a _long_ time. The doctor said it would probably be a little while before she could even move her arm properly.

Brittany had a gash on her leg. She could still walk on it just fine, and would probably be cleared to dance as normal in about a week. She looked at the floor, and her eyes filled with tears.

She sat in silence.

**vi.**

Once again, Glee made Regionals. They sang their first song without incident (Mr. Schuester had _somehow_ managed to convince them to do 'Stayin' Alive,' which actually turned out to be a crowd-pleaser), but it was the second piece that Brittany was dreading. 'Cause, the second song was _their_ song. Brittany's and Santana's. Theirs. And not just because they were, like, singing it or anything, but because it was literally _their_ song, and they had begged with Mr. Schue for weeks to let them do this for Regionals.

But Brittany was stupid, so Santana wasn't there. Of course, when she'd said that to Santana on the phone the night before, her friend had scoffed and said it wasn't her fault and it could've happened to anyone.

But it didn't. Because not everyone was as stupid as Brittany.

So Brittany and _Rachel Berry_ (since she was the only one in Glee who learned every part to every song just in case there was a sudden emergency) stepped onto the stage and split center. Though the spotlights were really, really bright, Brittany could see into the audience. She could see Santana sitting in the front row in the seat closest to the aisle with a large cast on her arm and a smile on her face. (Brittany could also see that the smile wasn't, like, _totally_ happy, but she didn't know if it was just because her friend was still sore or if it was because she wasn't up on stage, too.)

The music had started playing, and Brittany sang mechanically. Her head was turned away from most of the audience because she was just staring at Santana. Her eyes stung and teared up, but that might have just been from the lights. Brittany waved at Santana in the middle of the first chorus. Santana waved back, but she still seemed sad.

Brittany knew it wasn't fair. That Santana was paying for her mistake. That she was on stage singing and her best friend was sitting in the crowd. More than anything, Brittany just wanted to trade places. She should be the one sitting uncomfortably in an itchy seat and an itchier cast with doodled purple hearts and squiggles on it, outside her house for the first time in three weeks.

Brittany felt herself start to sweat, from either the gaze of her friend (which, the more she thought about it, seemed judgmental—what else could it be?) or the _lights_. She wished she could just sink into the stage floor and never come out again. She'd deserve it.

She turned her face away from Santana and met Rachel's eye. They were about to start the dance part of the piece. Brittany closed her mind off to everything except the beat of the music. One-and-two, three, four. One-and-two, three, four-and. The beats each sounded metallic in her head—like metal crashing against metal. They seemed to spin around her. Brittany closed her eyes tightly.

She nailed the dance.

**end.**


End file.
